This series of workshops in collaboration with TQW  invites us to explore the potential outcomes of a promiscuous research methodology for the curatorial, not only as a system of knowledge production but also as a generative framework through which theoretical, philosophical, conceptual, artistic, and aesthetic modalities shape the research—not toward a complex unity, but as a site of diverse forms of becoming. It advocates for a methodology that embraces transdisciplinary inquiry and the integration of personal and heterogeneous perspectives within scholarly work. Thus, we seek to open a conversation around the following questions: Can cruising be a research method? What might promiscuous methodologies offer to the curatorial? How can these modes disrupt normative structures of knowledge production?

The intention is not to manufacture concrete answers to the initial questions supported by arguments that favor one author, theory, or project over another. To research is not solely to satisfy epistemological needs but also to desire something more, to move from need to desire, from a kind of automated response to obsession. Promiscuity is based on the impermanence and contingency of the encounter with the other, the moments of intensive involvement and moments of withdrawal as a way to experience the creation of knowledge.

Each workshop explores a specific methodology (lexicon) for curatorial investigation, while also functioning as a practical curatorial exercise. We will explore ideas and concepts such as “Citing, Site-ing & Annotating,” “Cruising the Library,” “Cruising the Archive,” and “Cruising Curating.” These workshops are designed to help students build para-structures for their research. By the end of the course, students are expected to curate their own cruising library—an individually curated archive box containing various materials gathered during the workshops, one that operates according to its own logic of accumulation, classification, desire, and display (for more, please see below).

• Active participation in the workshops and contribution to the group discussions and presentations

• End-of-Term Project:

  By the end of the series, each participant assembles their own cruising library—an individually curated archive box that operates according to its own logic of accumulation, classification, desire, and display. 

  During the first session, you will receive an empty A3 archive box, which becomes the container and format for your project. Into this box you will gather books, printouts, objects, and other visual materials—building something closer to an exhibition in a box than a conventional library contribution. The gesture draws on a lineage running from Marcel Duchamp's La Boîte-en-valise (1936–1941) through the Fluxus artists who later adopted and expanded the format: the box as a portable, self-contained world, a collection that carries its own curatorial logic within it. Each box refuses the conventional definition of a library holding, making room for the kinds of materials that institutional libraries typically omit or cannot always accommodate—ephemera, reproductions, annotated copies, found objects, artworks, audio recordings, films. The box becomes a format capacious enough to hold what the institution excludes.

  All the boxes will be presented during a festival at TQW (14-16.01.2027) curated by Phila Bergmann and Thea Reifler (more info soon).

Course Language: English

A weekly reading list—including essential and further readings—will be provided upon registration.

No previous knowledge or practical experience is required.

The workshops are primarily aimed at third-semester MA Expanded Museum Studies students.